Canada’s pro-U.S. stance in Iran attack carries security risks — and political bets

By Canadian Press on February 28, 2026.

Canada’s support for U.S. strikes against Iran could come with security risks as the regime looks to retaliate against perceived enemies abroad, say experts, who also note the political gamble of betting on an attack with uncertain aims and outcomes.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said the government backs American military action on Saturday to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and “prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security.”

Under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — the nation’s supreme leader who U.S. President Donald Trump said had been killed after 37 years in power — Iran has a history of lashing out against western countries through cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, online harassment and assassination attempts.

“We should be concerned,” said Thomas Juneau, assistant professor at the University of Ottawa’s school of public and international affairs.

He pointed to a pattern of “transnational repression — targeting of Iranian-Canadian dissidents, human rights or democratic activists.”

Now in an existential fight, the regime may well pull out all the cyber-stops.

“The Iranian state is now facing a fight to the finish, to its elimination effectively. They have in their minds absolutely nothing to lose,” said Sajjan Gohel, international security director at the Asia Pacific Foundation.

“The Iranian state could utilize its contacts with organized criminal groups … to target the Iranian diaspora, to intimidate and even try to kill.”

Iran and affiliated groups have carried out numerous campaigns against far-flung foes.

In 2024, the House of Commons condemned an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate former Liberal justice minister Irwin Cotler.

Iranian hackers breached industrial equipment at Pennsylvania water facilities in 2023 and a New York dam in 2013. Between 2012 and 2013, Iran targeted dozens of U.S. financial institutions to disrupt online banking. More recently, state-aligned cyberwarfare groups have monitored and harassed dissidents in Canada, the U.S., U.K., Germany and elsewhere.

“Survival at home includes countering anti-regime activism abroad. They won’t disentangle these two things,” said Juneau.

Israel, which took part in Saturday’s airstrikes, for decades has pointed to the Iranian regime as the main source of threats to its security, and the Carney government has echoed the view that militant groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi rebels all threaten Israel with Iranian support.

Leaders of several western countries condemned the Iranian regime on Saturday while offering less full-throated support for the U.S.-Israeli attack. French President Emmanuel Macron called the situation “dangerous” and warned of “grave consequences” for global security.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres went further, condemning the use of force as well as Iran’s retaliation. He warned that they “undermine international peace and security.”

Carney has ruled out any Canadian military involvement in the attacks, despite rhetorical backing.

“What surprises me the most about Carney’s statement is the fact that he did take this rather definitive stance in support of a military action whose objectives seem fluid and uncertain, and whose consequences could be grave,” said Stephanie Carvin, who teaches international relations and security issues at Carleton University.

“You don’t have to support the Iranian regime to see the risks and danger of this particular action.”

Carvin added that Canada’s position on any issue sensitive to the U.S. has to keep the ongoing negotiations around free trade in mind, for fear of poking the bear.

The task of dislodging a regime largely through airstrikes remains a major hurdle.

“I’m not saying it’s impossible, but without boots on the ground — and that’s not what the United States wants to do — it would not be easy,” said Maral Karimi, author of “The Iranian Green Movement of 2009” and a lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University.

For others, that instability kindles a brighter flame than the dark certainty of a theocratic dictatorship.

“In that uncertainty, there’s also hope. That uncertainty provides the possibility of Iranians actually controlling their own destiny for once,” said Kaveh Shahrooz, a senior fellow a the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

“The opposite of uncertainty in this case would have been continued brutality, a system that is committed to gender and religious apartheid, that has no respect for international law and that has supported for decades terrorism around the world.”

In 2024, the federal government listed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — a “praetorian guard” military force that swears fealty to the ayatollah — as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code.

Saturday’s attack carries implications in areas ranging from international security to oil prices and trade flows. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz effectively shut down amid the fighting, blocking the corridor for a fifth of the world’s oil shipments, according to transport companies and Iran’s Tasnim news agency.

A key question now is how long the conflict will last, and how far beyond Iran it will spread, as the U.S. and Israel look to corral the strife set off by their reversal from decades of sanctions, containment, periodic surgical strikes and proxy wars.

“We’ve seen that regime change in the last 30 years doesn’t really work very well. Whether we’ve tried it in Afghanistan or in Iraq, it doesn’t quite develop the way perhaps people had envisaged,” said Gohel.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 28, 2026.

— With files from Dylan Robertson in Ottawa

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press

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pursuit diver

1 hour ago

The Iranian leadership had to be removed for peace to come to the region. Will there be ripple effects . . . of course! But the plan of this regime was to take out the Little Satan which is Israel and then take out the Big Satan, which is the West.
They have become embedded in EU countries to a point England, France, Belgium and even Germany are no longer focused on Western ideals, but are moving towards the darkness.
Iran has proxies operating across the Middle East, Africa, South America along with their sleeper cells, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and operatives who are in the US, Canada, EU, Australia, New Zealand . . . although in some areas the numbers are very low, they are a growing threat and someone had to act!
The Ayatollah, Mullahs and Imams, have called for the annihilation of the Jews and all of the Western Infidels at one point.
When the Syrian was began, even the Imam on the Temple Mount called for the Muslims to rise up, migrate to Europe, gorw in numbers and seize the countries from the Western Infidels.
We have watched the Iranian proxies including Hezbollah and Hamas have zero concern for the Palestinian people, using them as human shields, raising up terrorists from toddlers, brainwashing them in schools to kill Jews, even practise putting on suicide vests, weapons training at childrens summer camps, pumping anti-semitic hatred into them from almost birth!
They starved their people to build over 500 miles of tunnels and subterranean structures under hospitals, schools, mosques . . . all against international law . . . then when war came they started, they wouldn’t let the Palestinians go into them for protection!
They killed them in the streets for no reason, openly to bring fear in order to control them! They took 70% of the international food and aid and sold some to the people, while much of it went bad from sitting in piles in the Hamas storage areas . . . all while Hamas ate like kings and got fat!
The Iranian government in Iran, on their own streets killed what is estimated to be at least 30,000 protesters but some say it is over 50,000, by shooting into the crowds with snipers on rooftops and proxies brought in on the streets, shooting shotguns, rifles, handguns into crowds.
Hundreds were blinded from the shotgun pellets, and when the protesters went to the hospitals, they went there and killed them, and in some cases the medical personnel for treating them!
They estimate 300,000 were arrested, many tortured, raped, and killed in custody!
This is the regime people continue to allow to spread their false religion, their evil hatred and violence they say are in the name of Allah?
The regime many support and want to see continue?
This is not Iraq, it is not Afghanistan and the situation is different! There is a plan, there is a person in place to temporarily lead until elections!
If the United Nations would have fulfilled its mandate, there would have been peace in the Middle East decades ago, but they have continued to fail in all areas, and now are controlled by China, Russia, the Muslim Brotherhood and even Iran and peace will never be found. The UN is a complete failure and has been for over 3 decades, with Rwanda, Somalia, the Congo, the former Yugoslavia, Syria, and Sudan . . . all perfect examples, Lets use Haiti as a different example which wasn’t from war but from earthquakes, when it comes to supporting and stablizing them from the devastating effects of the earthquakes and unrest from poverty caused by them. They completely failed Haiti and in desperation, chaos arose!
The world will be a better place without the Iranian demonic regime!

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